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Trekkers Over and Around 40 |
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| Floridaze
~ Buffett, Key West, & Things Parrothead |
The
Key West Foreign Legion |
Warren Zevon | Other Ports | |
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by Apache Content: There
are places I'll remember All
these places had their meanings But
of all these friends and lovers I
know I'll never lose affection Beatles
(John Lennon) ~ ~ ~ --There
are places I'll remember ~ ~ ~ The din was horrible, and what met the eyes was even
worse. Vulgarity, all the ugliest kinds of sensuality, mortal
and immortal. Writhing bodies
scripted by Dante, a clangor of guitars and synthesized noise beyond a death
metallist's wildest dreams, and the air full of the bizarre and various scents
of sexual and other hungers -- again, human and vampire alike. No strange envious eyes of Miklos, no dark bald head over a
pleased and knowing smile, saying "she's here-- just in
back--" ~ ~ ~ --Some
forever, not for better, ~ ~ ~ Janette's Raven was dead, and Lacroix was the vampire
who had drained its life. There was
not even an echo of her from the walls, the floor, the wooden bar, the big
mirror. Lacroix's dominion
permeated the place. --It
was her time.--
--She
sold me the place for a song.-- Lacroix's blunt little sentences gnawed at him.
Nicholas passed through the dancing crowd as if deaf and blind, noticed
without interest that the Spaniard Vachon was watching his child Urs dance and
drinking from his glass with dipped fingers; saw that Lacroix was in his booth
indulging his sense of humor as the dark father confessor of CERK.
The 'broadcast' light was on; the red hue it lent Lacroix's pallor was of
a piece with the place. Nicholas could not hear Lacroix's voice from the
booth, but it pierced his mind. The
small sentences of dismissal, she thought it would be better. And the worst: --don't
look for her.-- ~ ~ ~ --some
are gone, and some remain. ~ ~ ~ It was Nicolas de Brabant who walked into the cold
loft as dawn blued and then reddened the sky beyond the CN Tower.
There was no comforting, quasi-mortal Nick Knight in his heart this
morning, just the bleak vampire whose companion of centuries, sister, lover,
fellow hunter was -- utterly gone. The cabinet that had held the da Vinci portrait for so
many years was still in its place, with an emptiness inside -- for
what could replace a da Vinci? Nicolas
ran his fingers over the carved surface, the inlay, and opened it:
what could replace Janette? The
intensity of immortality hurt him now as it had not done for decades -- She had said that once, when it seemed he must leave:
"how many years, Nicola, how many decades...?" before they would meet
again -- --the sun was actually rising now, and the
heating of his skin demanded he act-- no
progress, no progress, said his mind, just pain and fire and the threat
of fire, and the voice of an angel saying:
"these are the innocents you killed.." ~ ~ ~ --All
these places had their meanings ~ ~ ~ He brought the blinds down and slumped at the piano
with a rage so fiery it left him no direction to move.
His fingers went unthinkingly to the keys-- -- Janette coming to stand with her hands
on his shoulders as he sat to down to play for her at the pianoforte:
"Listen to what he wrote, this man who cannot even hear his own
music!"-- --Janette moving to lean on the piano as
he played, the thin linen of Directoire fashion leaving so little hidden on this
most hidden of women -- -- and then the image of Janette laughing
lightly yet again at his love for his cherished mortals-- though in
the next instant she allowed herself to surrender to the mortal composition she
knew he would play only for her-- Janette allowing him to see that
her immortal heart was moved by her silly and beautiful Nicola's ability to love
such things as much as by the music itself -- Where? where? He was hungry, desperate.
He drank: the taste of cow's blood disgusted him; its chilly mass seemed
to clot in his throat. --Do not seek her.-- --It's better this way.-- Nicholas paced with the accumulated fury of three
months. This was December, kindly month of the long nights.
He drained the bottle, opened and half drained another.
The sight of protein shake on the shelf below the bottles brought out a
flash of yellow eyes. When had Lacroix ever told the truth? ~ ~ ~ --with
lovers and friends I still can recall ~ ~ ~ There was no sleep for him that day, only fury.
He drained every bottle in the house and had mad fantasies of opening his
own skin just for the taste of more. The thought of Paris rose to possess him.
Janette will be there, yes, Paris, the city of lights that were really
masks, the only proper home for the most dazzling and invisible of women. Easy to arrange: a
chartered jet for the director of the fabulously rich and obscure de Brabant
Foundation? Mais oui, mais
certainement, a l'instant, m'sieur... we will be in Toronto at eight... Easy to arrange: the Nick Knight voice sounded strange
to his ears; he was playing a part that had no reality for him:
"yeah, I think it's the flu, hard to say..." Reese: "Yup,
that flu sure can be a bitch. You
take care of yourself, you hear? You're
a good cop and I want you at the top of your form."
The vampire mind, laughing coldly:
Mortal ignorance. Mortal
solicitude. A Nick Knight laugh.
"Thanks, cap. I think
I'll just go to sleep for a couple days and wake up when it's over." Reese: "You
know, my wife makes a kind of flu cocktail that she just swears by. Tastes like .. well, like a lot of bad things all put
together, but..." Another Nick laugh.
"Thanks, but I think I'll pass on it, Cap. Don't want to get too
sick." Reese laughed too.
"OK, Detective, you take care now." And he was free. The vampire flew to the airport to meet his plane.
A December night meant that even travelling East to meet the passing
hours, he would have ample time to get into the city from Orly.
It was a simple, familiar matter of looking the VIP passport inspect or
in the eye with a gentle assurance that this visitor's papers were in perfect
order, and a small, also familiar flight toward a city he had loved since before
its Kings assumed their throne. ~ ~ ~ --I
know I'll often stop and think about them ~ ~ ~ He took advantage of the remaining hours of darkness
to simply fly over the city at a mad speed, not looking or listening, but
feeling in the dark with the most delicate and inward of the vampire
senses-- calling from his very blood for her to respond...
sister, lover for nearly a thousand years-- Closely bound as they were, her blood freshly in his
system only this past spring, he was sure he would find her if she were there. But there was not the smallest echo of Janette
anywhere. In the last hour before dawn, he sought out his own
kind. There was a place, dangerously named "Sang Vital" -- "Lifeblood;" there were familiar faces there, some of which fell open
with surprise and pleasure at the sight of him.
Nicolas, depuis longtemps... ! Nicolas,
et toi ici...! It's been so
long, so good to see you here! No,
there had been no glimmer of la tres belle, la tres jolie Janette:
she had not stopped in for a visit; no one had seen a raven haired beauty
lurking in sunglasses and a turban near the runways for the autumn salons. Then there was the day, some sleep at last in a room
at the back of the Sang, with the knowledge of bottles of blood so nearby
screaming at his senses. But the
madness was only for Janette. The sun set, and he left Sang for a second night of
hunting. But this night also
brought no trace, no hint of an outcry in his blood that she was near. As the second night waned, the insanity began to
surrender. He landed in the Rue de la
Boucherie, a small street
in a very old quarter, his thoughts as well as his body weary from failure. Not
here. Rome? Am I really going to
fly a grid over Rome hunting for Janette? She
hates Rome anyway, rages at the Church that made women into nuns, chattels, or
whores. Venice? Coming out of Rue de la
Boucherie, Nicholas simply
walked, something he'd done little of these past two nights.
He let the memories flood his mind without reawakening the furious desire
that had controlled him for days. Janette,
in so many moods, in so many eras... And how would she greet him, if she thought he had
tracked her against her wish? It
was his own need that had hurtled him across the Atlantic, his own desires. What if hers were different?
What if leaving Toronto were incidental? What if she really had meant to leave him? She had done it before. ~ ~ ~ --In
my life, I've loved them all ~ ~ ~ -----
The image was still photographically clear:
Lacroix in high Renaissance magnificence that accorded oddly with his
fierce centurion's face, saying, "Accept it, Nicholas.
You must inhabit your own nature, as Janette does hers." He was sick with misery, sick enough to want to die.
"Without her, I have nothing at all. *Rien de rien.
Ma famille, en cendres. Mes
compagnons, meme chose.*" My
family, gone to ash. My friends,
the same. Lacroix had, as ever, simply ignored the insult
wrapped inside his child's words. "Nous ne sommes pas commes ils; nous
ne existerons pas commes ils." -- "We are -not- as they are; we do not live as they live."
Nicholas had watched without objection as Lacroix had touched the
hangings of their apartment, run his fingers along the sheets of their bed. "Janette indulged your touching little domestic
fantasy, far beyond what I would have imagined she could.
Now she has returned to her nature, as we all must.
Nicholas, accept it: Janette
lives as what she is, and it is time for you to do the same." Lacroix had prevailed.
He'd left the beloved "petit cabinet" where he and Janette had
posed as man and wife, and gone hunting with Lacroix for many years.
And eventually Janette had rejoined them, sharing nothing of where she
had passed the intervening decades. --- In the years after Janette's return, they had been a
trio of magnificent predators, together as equals in a way they had never been
before-- and never could be again. The sky began to rise through the spectrum toward the
yellow flush of day he had barely seen for centuries.
Time to find shelter from the light. ~ ~ ~ --But
of all these friends and lovers ~ ~ ~ Despite its name, the sewer below Paris was many
different places, some of them clean and dry.
And it was wonderfully private, which was why he had turned away from a
second night of hospitality among his own kind. It had been in that era of hunting that Nicholas de
Brabant first forswore Lacroix's version of his nature:
never again to kill the innocent-- there were so many cruel,
so many guilty, so many humans who justified the saying that man is a wolf to
man-- but it had set him apart; he was no longer as Janette and
Lacroix were. And now... even in
his worst rage, he had not taken a human. Had
not even broken open one of the bottles at the Sang. So now there were nine hours to spend in the Paris
sewer, with a vampire whose madness was abating finding the heart to laugh at
himself: how much would I have bet that I would never have to do this again?
For Nicholas de Brabant had last had occasion to use this refuge
during the turmoil of the Jacquerie, when he'd been hunted not as a creature of
the night, but an aristocrat. ~ ~ ~ --There
is no one compares with you ~ ~ ~ He felt the third night begin, and emerged as the sky
fell from blue to black. He went to
a telephone kiosk, with its funny little message:
"en cas de derangement..." "in case you are deranged..." He'd heard a tourist produce the mistranslation years ago,
but now, he thought with amusement, it almost fit the case. He hadn't given a thought to Nick Knight's life for
over fifty hours; it was time to take some care of it. The first message on his phone struck him like a
flame: "Hi Nick, it's Nat.
So you booked out? Let me
guess, you're playing hookey with old Robert Mitchum movies -- and
you didn't call me? You know I -love- those sleepy eyes." "Hey partner, it's Trace, sorry to hear you're
sick. This is really about sticking
me with the Schneider report, right? Hey,
I'm just kidding. Give me a jingle if I can do anything, and get better
quick." "Nick, it's Nat.
C'mon, I know you don't have the flu.
Tell your doctor what the real problem is, and maybe I can cure
it. Like, take two Fred and
Gingers, and call me in the morning? Nick...?" "Nick .. this isn't funny.
Where are you? Pick up.
You're not asleep. Pick up. Nick?
Nick?" "Nick, this is Nat.
I'm standing in the loft and there's no sign of you. I'm going to my place now and hoping there's a note.
If you get this, will you please call me -- I'm really
worried now." "Nick, this is Nat.
I'm at home, no message. C'mon
Nick, what's the story here? I
looked in your fridge... you had yourself quite a little binge, didn't you?
What's going on? "OK, I went through pissed off, and now I'm
worried again. It's five o'clock
Thursday -- five in the morning.
No sign of you in the loft. You haven't picked up your messages.
Nick, what am I supposed to do? Where are you?" "Nick, if you get this message... actually, if
you get this message, I don't know what it means.
I'm going down to the Raven to ask Janette for help.
I don't know what else to do, Nick.
I'm really scared here... I don't know what could have happened to
you." A very different voice.
"I can't believe you did this.
You just left. Not a word to
anyone. Not a word to me. You just left. I
really can't quite believe it... but I guess I have to, don't I?
As you probably can tell, I've seen the Raven.
I didn't actually bother to ask anyone, it was plain.
If Janette were even on the same continent, she wouldn't let that happen.
And you just flew away with her, didn't you?
That's the code, right, no strings, no witnesses... no long goodbyes?
Not even any short goodbyes, I guess.
Well. I don't know why I'm
doing this. I shouldn't have called
this number again... it's a dead issue, isn't it? Yah... a little vampire pun
there. Enough of this.
I guess I have a lot of real interesting lab notes to go down and file.
Or burn. Damn you, Nick, I
really expected more from you. I deserved
more. And you knew it, or at least
you let me think you did." His eyes were shut over the pain, but there was to be
one additional measure of it. "Nicholassss," a drawn-out voice of
displeasure, "your little mortal friend came to the Raven this evening. I haven't asked her why-- yet, but I do notice
that you don't seem to be in residence chez vous. That appears to leave
your Dr. Lambert rather unattended, and in possession of, shall we say,
documents? If you take my
meaning." ~ ~ ~ --And
these memories lose their meaning ~ ~ ~ A second call to Toronto, pausing for the eternal
thought... five here is... ten there? Eleven?
Daytime, anyway. Home. A sleepy voice. "Hello..
Lambert." "Nat, it's me. I'm OK, and "
The line went dead. Parisian payphones don't have a redial button;
reentering the digits took long seconds. "Nat,
don't hang up. Leave your house.
Go to a hotel under a false name and pay cash.
Do it RIGHT NOW." "Great."
The line went dead again, but the one syllable had been wide awake with
comprehension, anger-- and compliance. His next call was to the airport.
Yes, as the Foundation had requested, the jet had been maintained in a
condition of readiness, and a pilot was on call around the clock.
An hour? But certainly. He hung up the phone, his mind turning to the question
of feeding -- there were indeed cow pastures between here and Orly,
but his fastidious nature revolted against the thought -- what about
the Sang, just a little to drink quickly, enough to get him back to Toronto?
Human blood: he knew he'd
had too much of it lately, was remembering the taste, no the savor and the joy
of it, too vividly now. The pay phone rang while he wrestled with his
thoughts, and he turned back to it, assuming it would be the international
operator calling to confirm charges as they sometimes did... "Nicola." ~ ~ ~ --I
know I'll never lose affection ~ ~ ~ Only one voice in all of history had pronounced his
name just so. He reeled, clutching
the receiver to his ear, leaning against the phone kiosk, his eyes closed
tightly to help him listen... "Janette."
An intense whisper. "Mon cher," her voice was sad and
sweet, "do not seek for me." "What's happened to you?
Where are you?" "Je vais bien, Nicola," said the sad
voice. "Aussi bien qu'est possible"
I'm fine, as good as can be, an assurance given in a tone of grief and
exhaustion that held no reassurance at all. "Janette--"
he whispered again, his heart tearing open, "please tell me where
you are." "Patience, Nicola," she said.
"En temps voulu..."
her voice trailed off, then picked up again:
"Be patient; when the time is right I'll come back, je te promete,
I promise." "Where, Janette?"
His voice was almost harsh. "Do not ask, mon cher.
When the time is right...." She was denying him even the simplest answer.
He was possessed by the image of her neck as it had been last spring in
the moonlight next to the lake, that alabaster fountain from which he had drunk
so passionately, so urgently. The
image shining behind his closed eyes, the sense of her blood leaping up
throughout his body -- He answered the promise with an accusation.
"This *is* what you wanted then, simply to leave me.
C'est la meme rengainne... it's the same old story, we come close
and then you disappear, just take off, t'esquives." "You must not think that, Nicola." The pain in her voice was too real to doubt. "Then what shall I think?"
It was a bitter whisper. "What
would you have me do?" If
you need help, why won't you take mine? cried his heart.
And then Natalie... A small sad laugh, as if she read his thoughts.
"Toujours le preux chevalier, Nicola? Always the white
knight? But you cannot help. It is
odd to be ... beyond help," she said delicately, "and toute seule,
all alone in this season of the sacred child, ce bebe qui par son simple
survenir remanie le destin du monde entier..."
Her voice trailed off in bitterness.
"Guardez les mythes, Nicola.
Ils sont plus dangereuses qu'on connais." Beware of myths-- they're more dangerous
than you know? The child whose mere arrival changed the whole world's fate?
What myth could threaten Janette? Why
would she speak of the Christ, still his own preoccupation hundreds of years
after he had watched little Jeanne d'Arc die in the flames?
Janette simply did not talk like that-- had a priest attacked
her? Ridiculous thought; the result would simply be one dead
priest, and Janette would not have come away from the encounter babbling. Had
she gone mad? "Let me come to you..."
Even as he said it, he realized that in less than a hour he was scheduled
to fly to-- Natalie. "Janette--
Lacroix has threatened Natalie Lambert. I
have to go back-- but then I" "Non," she cut him off, her voice sad
but strong. "Go and watch over
your Natalie." And then: "Nicola,
quoi que je fasse, whatever I may do, you must understand how I care for
you." The pain of it bowed his
head-- and the passionate, sad voice continued, tearing at his
heart: "Seulement, Nicola, et a jamais."
Only you, and forever. The line went dead, and the vampire was left holding a
mildly buzzing telephone receiver, his immortal heart crushed as if by a stone,
there on an ordinary Parisian sidewalk early in an ordinary Parisian winter
evening. His mind was one great raging fire of thoughts:
Janette refusing him, Natalie in desperate need of him, Janette, somehow
hurt or lost or in pain; Natalie in danger... And he was hungry and there was no
time to feed... there were so many mortals nearby; he could smell their blood,
hear their hearts, all the more intensely as he grew hungrier. No. That,
at least, was a familiar battle, and one he knew how to win.
He would not kill. He no longer killed for blood.
A victory that had lasted over a century-- He grasped at the single idea of what was next:
he had to go back, had to get there ahead of the Enforcers. He forced himself to concentrate, to find a dark,
unnoticed corner from which he could fly up into the darkened evening sky and
leave for the airport, to catch his flight back to Toronto, his life as an
almost-mortal, to the brave mortal woman whom he barely dared to touch,
whose love he barely dared to acknowledge.
All the way across the Atlantic, the contradictions ate at him, Janette
and Natalie: the one a woman he
could have, but only in darkness, who now demanded that he let her remain
hidden; the other a woman of light who believed in his struggle toward a light
of his own, a woman he'd ordered into hiding for fear of his own kind snapping
that slim thread, her mortal life... A small knock at the door.
Natalie Lambert swallowed in fear, trying to think what to do.
It could just be the maid... Vampires had to be hunting her, that had to be the
reason for Nick's command and his air of desperation.
He had seemed to think this would be enough...
but was it?... but if they were vampires, they could just come
through the door, so why knock? -- but no one knew she was here... The knock again, a couple of light taps. I'm
going crazy, Natalie Lambert thought, and walked over to the
door. "Who is it?" "Na-ta-lie."
A voice she knew. She opened
the door to find Janette standing in the prosaic green-gray hallway of
this determinedly nondescript hotel. Janette
was dressed exotically, to say the least, wearing a huge, hooded cloak and
sunglasses. The cloak was big
enough to hide two or three people, and swirled about Janette shapelessly. Nat swung the door open.
"Come on in." She
stuck her head in the hallway. "Is
Nick with you?" Janette uttered a small laugh.
"No, Nicola is not... with me." It was meant in a larger sense, and Natalie frowned.
"I thought the two of you..." she started awkwardly. "Non. Pas
possible... " It isn't
even possible. Janette threw back the hood of the cloak and pulled off the
sunglasses. She looked different, Natalie thought. Almost... shorter. It
isn't? Why not?
But Janette's tone of voice was flat, the kind that would brook no
interrogation, so-- another question she'd probably never get to
ask, let alone get an answer to. What
was it about Janette? She seemed...
diminished. Her color's off,
Natalie realized with a start. She
almost *has* color... and her eyes... crowsfeet? Janette? --Oops,
I'm staring. "Not that I'm not delighted to see you, but why
are you here?" Not to mention, how did you find me? Janette smiled with a trace of her old hauteur.
"Simply to tell you that you are alright, cherie.
You may... come out of hiding now." "How'd you know where I was?" Janette smiled. "We
are good at finding." And, as
Natalie reacted nervously, she raised a hand.
"No-one knows where you are, personne. I followed you.
Nicola..." "You talked to Nick?"
Natalie caught her breath. //If he's not with you, where the hell is
he?// "For a very short time only," Janette said.
Now her bitterness was thick enough to slice.
Her eyes lost focus, filling with memories, and Natalie Lambert stared at
her frankly, wondering what could possibly be the matter, thinking of a hundred
questions she didn't dare to ask-- which reminded her of a question
that she did dare ask: "How could you let them do that to the
Raven?" This startled Janette back into the present; she
hadn't expected the mortal woman to care what had become of her precious club.
The smile she gave Natalie was haunted.
"It doesn't matter now," she said sadly. Natalie was frowning, trying to know what she could
not know. What was the matter?
"Janette... can I help?" she said softly.
The thought of her helping a vampire was nearly inconceivable, and yet...
what could have happened? A single small stroke of compassion, and Janette's
face became suffused with the sorrow she had been controlling.
She fought it back. "Non," she repeated with soft irony,
"pas possible." She
took a breath, and some of her old strength came back in to her expression.
"Besides, I came to help you... Go
home, Natalie. It is all right now.
Tout s'arrange." Right, thought Natalie.
A vampire shows up and tells me 'everything is straightened out,' and
I'm supposed to just go along my merry way. And yet she believed Janette. She gathered her things -- one change of
clothes and a coat, not much of a wardrobe for exile -- and moved
past Janette to the hotel door. Tell me again, why am I taking this vampire's
word for it that the world is now safe for Natalie? But she was -- and Janette looked so... unJanette. Almost forlorn. "Good luck, Janette," she found herself
saying. Absurdly, or so she would
have thought ten minutes ago. "Whatever
it is, good luck." Janette smiled at her again, pulling the hood back up
over the raven black hair. Much of
her self-possession, her air of almost-grandeur, returned to her
posture, and with it the distant amusement Natalie most associated with Janette. But the words, like the smile, were more than friendly, were
all but confiding: "Nous
las femmes -- how often do we have such 'good' luck, eh?
But thank you." We women,
Natalie thought, smiling back.
Yah, the differences between humans and vampires pale in comparison
with the gulf between the sexes. And in the next second, Sure,
right-- just keep telling yourself that. "One thing more-- Na-ta-lie?"
Janette lay a gloved hand very lightly on her arm. Natalie nodded. "Do not mention to Nicola that you have seen me." A frown of incomprehension came and went on Nat's
face, and she nodded her assent. "Sure--
if that's what you want." A derisory snort escaped Janette, but then her
expression was sad again. "Eh,
bien, what I want--- "
She shrugged. Nat nodded again.
"Goodbye, Janette." Nat
walked down to the elevator and pressed the button for Down; when she looked
back toward the door of room, Janette was no longer there. ~ ~ ~ --I
know I'll often stop and think about them ~ ~ ~ From the plane, Nick tried Natalie's phone and got the
machine as he hoped. He left no
message, wanting to add nothing any Enforcer could conceivably use.
Fear for Natalie's life ate at him-- the fact that his own
life would also be forfeit according to the Code barely crossed his mind. There was again the brief charade with passport and
customs, and then he was free to go. He
went to the Raven first, to Lacroix first, to get information, to find out how
terrible the threat really was. The hour was early, the Raven still far from full.
Only a few mortals were in the place, sitting at a table near the back,
talking about some party the night before.
Nick's senses swept the place, finding no vampires in the front room, no
Lacroix, no bartender in sight-- And unattended on the bar was an open bottle that
Nick's senses, on edge from sheer hunger, told him was the house 'special,' the
admixture of alcohol and human blood that kept vampire thirsts in check as the
human beings who frequented the Raven dangled themselves carelessly in front of
those immortal hungers. Such a
bottle should never, never be left out, unwatched, unguarded; such a secret
should never be handled so recklessly. Nick
went straight to it, picked it up, thinking to put it out of sight, away behind
the bar, somewhere, but the hunger in him screamed and he lifted the bottle to
his lips. Hungry as he was, he swallowed the human blood
thirstily, happily, hating the thrill of it heating his body, hating the
scintillation as the vampire senses awoke to the sheer pleasure of their proper
food-- too much, too much, his conscience tore at him.
Even though this was sure to be lawfully gotten, unkilled-for
blood, it was human, it was wrong, it was the emblem of the unnatural existence
he was cursed to... And there was Lacroix, leaning on the bar a few feet
away from him, watching him drink with idle pleasure. "Breaking a long fast, Nicholas?" Lacroix's smoothly amused voice said that he almost certainly
knew the answer, had almost certainly arranged the little scene Nick had found
upon entering-- had arranged to feed his ravenous son as soon as he
arrived-- but only what Lacroix had wished him to drink. "Yes."
And that was all the satisfaction he would give Lacroix. "Tell me
what you've done," he said roughly. Lacroix smiled, and his eyes widened.
"So very nice to see you, Nicholas. You ‑must‑ stop by more often." The slightest emphasis, the smallest threat.
Nick's anger increased. "To
answer your question," Lacroix continued mildly, "as you well know, I
have done -many- things." Another small smile. "You know what I mean."
Temper confined, but pressing. Lacroix sighed. "So
earnest, Nicholas. So--
glum. And you used to be so
droll." "Did you call the Enforcers?" Lacroix laughed. "And so-- how shall
I say it? -- callow. Gullible.
Credulous. So tediously
predictable‑‑ or shall I say, so -conveniently-
so?" The eyes turned icy cold.
"No, Nicholas, I did not, as you so crudely phrase it, call the
Enforcers. They lack.... subtlety.
I simply wished to bring you back to your senses-- and, more
directly, back to your -own- place in the scheme of things."
His voice was light, but the eyes were implacable.
"Home, so to speak." "You wanted to bring me to heel, and you used
Natalie to do it." Contempt saturated Nick's voice, but Lacroix appeared
unaffected, simply pouring himself a glass from the bottle Nick had set down. "You -will- have your little mortal
pets," Lacroix murmured, sipping at his glass. "What about Janette?" Nick said harshly.
"You haven't brought her-- home, as you call it." "Ah, la petite Janette," Lacroix
mulled. "But Nicholas, she too
is in her proper place. At present,
that place is -not- here."
A trace of steel crept into his voice.
"You went on a fool's errand, Nicholas. Now let it rest." "You know, don't you? Why
she left?" The hatred that had
colored Nick's voice fell away, swallowed in the sheer desire to know. Lacroix shrugged slightly.
"It -is- my habit to know- where my
children are concerned." He
punctuated his unresponsive answer by flicking an amused and somewhat malicious
glance at his sulky child, then finished his glass.
Nick started to move toward him, but Lacroix turned his back and walked
away. ~ ~ ~ --In
my life, I love you more ~ ~ ~ And then to Natalie's apartment, hoping she could have
left him a clue as to her hiding place. He
played the messages on her answering machine, unimportant daily
news-- no, important daily news; her cat at the vet, her drycleaning.
Tiny, cherished details that made life life.
Is this what you want? mocked the vampire in his mind.
To join this woman in picking up her cat at the vet? To have a son? answered his human heart. To
make love to a mortal woman without taking her life?-- to make love
to Natalie without hurting her, simply to kiss her without fighting away my
sense of her blood... Maybe Natalie had called in.
It would be mid-shift; maybe dispatch would know.
Or Reese -- bighearted Reese, too kind, or so it seemed, to
work out in a command position. An
easy call: "Hi cap, it's Knight."
And this time it really was, and not a stonyhearted vampire scheming to
get away. "Knight! Good
to hear from you... how ya feeling? Been
asleep these past coupla days, have ya? Out
of the game?" He snorted. "Out
of the game, definitely. Listen, I
was wondering... I heard Natalie Lambert got the flu too..?" It was a shot in the dark, but it would have been a
way for her to check in, leave him some clue that would let him find her. "Lambert? Nah,
she's fine. Hang on--
no, she's not, but she was right here a minute ago. ... Uh, Nick, you there? Nick? Damn, I
wish you'd develop some phone manners...." "What are you doing here?"
Nick's voice was tense, accusatory. "Oh, weighing organs, inspecting the contents of
the stomach, observing the odd splotch of lividity here and there... in short,
my job," said Natalie Lambert. "I
work here, remember?" "I told you..." Natalie was ready for this one.
"I'm not going into hiding from either your friends or your enemies.
I live my life, they live theirs -- or they don't.
Either way, they don't make my rules.
I have a job to do." It
was pretty convincing, Natalie thought, wondering again why Janette insisted on
having her secret kept. Nick glared at her, and she glared back, in no mood to
give ground. "Unless you'd
care to give me some other instructions," she snapped.
"Maybe this time you'd like me to cross the border wearing a Groucho
nose and a wig?" "No. It wasn't as... serious as I thought." "Really?" she said sarcastically. "What wasn't? You
go on a blood binge, you disappear, you call me up and tell me to
disappear, and then you show up and say, oops, no big deal?
Which part wasn't a big deal? It
all looked fairly serious to me." He sighed. His
mind swam-- Janette, dark lover across centuries who would not have
him too near; Lacroix, cruelly exacting father whose motives he still had never
learned to comprehend after eight hundred years, an angel saying "these are
the souls of the innocents you killed"-- and Natalie Lambert,
thirty-two year old mortal woman, more fragile in his eyes than she could
ever comprehend-- staring at him with mortal anger, mortal injured
feelings. Injured feelings? He looked at her wordlessly, trying to understand
Natalie as she stood before him, her eyes huge and full of questions and pain.
In this cool, tiled room where she peered at his DNA through her
microscope and inched at the speed of one human mind toward a reversal of his
torment. Natalie, with her great
chestnut fall of hair, the mouth he so often wanted to kiss, to simply possess
as he had so many women. She was looking at him with brokenhearted exhaustion. "Nick... I can't do this.
I feel like a human rubber band... stretch stretch stretch, release. It gets old, Nick. You
go off on some tangent, you disappear, not even a note.. I really can't do
this." Nick sighed again.
"Janette vanished." Natalie's surprise was genuine, though not for the
reason he thought. "So?
If what I saw at the Raven is any evidence, that happened a while ago. Why suddenly take off now?" "I... needed to see her."
Nick looked away, then back at Natalie to find her watching him with
almost too much comprehension. Natalie sighed. "Nick,
I'm really afraid I'm losing you," she said gently. "The last few months have been-- well,
terrible, and then you just disappear like that... I thought--" "I know."
He came to stand right in front of her, his blue eyes haunted with pain,
conflict, memory, unfulfillable desire, the brew of torments Natalie had grown
to know so well in this man's eyes. He
took her hand, "Nat... I don't know what to say.
But I came back-- to you.
To here. To everything we're trying to accomplish."
Is that enough? his eyes were asking. Is
that enough to keep you in this with me, to keep you risking your life for me? It is for tonight, Natalie Lambert realized. And
let tomorrow take care of tomorrow. She started to say, "Nick, this just can't keep
happening--" but her eyes said otherwise.
Her eyes said, I guess you gave me enough to keep me going.
She met his eyes steadily, letting him see it. And saw the flood of gratitude and hope, and the love and
desire he never let himself tell her of, rising in his eyes. For the thousandth or ten thousandth time she let
herself imagine what those eyes would look like if they ever made it, if she
ever managed to bring him back across to his humanity and free him from the
worst of his shadows. She smiled at
him. Well, OK: that was more than enough for tonight. ~ ~ ~ --In
my life, I love you more. ~ Go to "Mad, Bad and Dangerous to Know" ~ ~ Return to "Forever Knight" ~ ~ Return to Apache's Archive ~
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